Supreme Court Overruled.....By the Senate

Despite a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that prisoners being held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba could challenge their detentions by filing writs of habeus corpus in American courts, the Republican controlled Senate yesterday voted 49-42 to deny prisoners of this right.

Salon reports that:

...Under the provision, Guantanamo Bay detainees would be allowed to appeal their status as an "enemy combatant" one time, to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. But they would not be able to file petitions known as writs of habeas corpus, which are used to fight unlawful detentions, in that or any other U.S. court...

...In 2004, the Supreme Court said the 500 or so prisoners held there could file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts to fight their detentions. Many of the prisoners were captured in Afghanistan and have been held at Guantanamo for several years without being charged...

Commenting upon the Senate's de facto overruling of sound Supreme Court precedent, Elisa Massimino, the Washington director of Human Rights First, stated:

"Depriving an entire branch of government of its ability to exercise meaningful oversight is a decidedly wrong course to take."

This is an extremely significant Senate vote. Not only does the vote overrule the Supreme Court, and raise numerous isses related to Separation of Powers, but it deprives prisoners being held in U.S. controlled prisons of the essential, constitutionally guaranteed right of habeus corpus.

It is irrelevant whether these detainees are in fact guilty of a crime. It is irrelevant whether they once intended to harm America. No one is arguing that their very imprisonment is a threat to liberty. What I am arguing is that if you are going to put suspected terrorists in prison for two years without charging them, and refuse to allow any media or public oversight of their detention, you should at the very least give them proper recourse to challenge their detentions, just as any prisoner in any other U.S. prison would have.

I guess that when our Vice President is openly lobbying Congress to preserve the U.S. government's ability to torture detainees, no one should be surprised that the Senate treats Constitutional rights like leaves in the wind.